40 SCIENCE AND CULTURE, JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 2012

Introduction

Tarak Chandra Das is a great anthropologist and healso happens to be one of the worst victims ofinstitutional amnesia, which is a characteristic

feature of the centres of higher learning in India. Nothingis truer than the oblivious behaviour of the Indiananthropologists towards T. C. Das. The two Directories ofIndian Anthropologists, one compiled and edited by Dr.Sachin Roy and published in 1970 on behalf of the IndianAnthropological Association and the other edited by A.Basu, M. P. Basu and A. K. Adhikary in 1981 publishedby the Anthropological Survey of India did not includethe name of T. C. Das1,2. The Directory entitledAnthropologists in India edited by Dr. Sachin Roy containsthe names of Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901-1972), IrawatiKarve (1905-1970) and D. N. Majumdar (1903-1960) inpages 11-12, 29-30 and 33 respectively. The other book,the Directory of Anthropologists edited by Basu, et.al.,contains profiles of 552 anthropologists of India, prepared

TARAK CHANDRA DAS (1898-1964): A FORGOTTENANTHROPOLOGIST

ABHIJIT GUHA*

Tarak Chandra Das was a pioneering Indian anthropologist during the formative period of thediscipline and is largely forgotten by his successors. He made immense contributions through hismeticulous fieldwork and theoretical insights on the applications of anthropology in India. Histhree major contributions are described and analyzed in this article from an anthropologicalperspective. It is revealed from the analysis that Das’s contributions in Indian anthropology is stillrelevant having immense theoretical potential, since he moved beyond structural-functional theoryand the study of small communities towards a dynamic approach for undertaking complex socio-economic problems like Bengal Famine of 1943.

ARTICLE

* Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore:721102, West Bengal, E-mail: abhijitguhavu@rediffmail.com

on the basis of the responses of the individual scholars tothe mailed questionnaires sent by the editors during 1978.So, this Directory had no scope to include the name ofT.C. Das who passed away in the year 1964.

The Sachin Roy book contains a ‘Foreword’ byProfessor L. P. Vidyarthi who was the President of theIndian Anthropological Association and later wrote acomprehensive history of Indian Anthropology in twovolumes. In the second section of his long Foreword (about12 pages), nowhere did Vidyarthi mention the original andpioneering monographs on Purum Kukis and BengalFamine written by T. C. Das, although he cited the worksof Nirmal Kumar Bose, K. P. Chattopadhyay, D. N.Majumdar, Verrier Elwin and C. Von Furer-Haimendorf asimportant personalities towards the making of IndianAnthropology during its constructive period (1921-1948)3.L. P. Vidyarthi’s magnum opus, Rise of Anthropology inIndia (1978) includes descriptions of the works of T. C.Das especially in vol. I while vol. II of the book has a fullchapter (chapter VII) on the biographical ‘Profiles of IndianAnthropologists’ along with the life-sketches andchronological list of publications of eleven eminent

VOL. 78, NOS. 1–2 41

anthropologists of India, including K. P. Chattopadhyay,N. K. Bose, D. N. Majumdar, Irawati Karve and othersbut not T. C. Das3 .

In this context it would be relevant to mention aboutthe University Grants Commission’s Model Curriculum inAnthropology published in 2001. The Model Curriculumwas prepared by the Curriculum DevelopmentCommittee(CDC) in Anthropology constituted by UGC andwas sent to all the Universities of India which hadAnthropology as a subject at the post-graduate level. Inthe syllabus for B.A. /B.Sc. there is a section on the‘History of Anthropology in India: Pioneers in IndianAnthropology’ in paper 4 entitled ‘Indian Anthropology’,The ‘illustrative list’ of pioneers which is given in thesyllabus contains names of 15 anthropologists andsociologists including B.S. Guha, L A K Aiyar, D. N.Majumdar, and Irawati Karve among others. Significantly,the names of T. C. Das and N. K. Bose are not given inthe list.4. The name of N.K. Bose, however has found aplace in the syllabus of the Model Curriculum under paper7 entitled ‘Theories in Social-Cultural Anthropology’ among18 foreign and Indian anthropologists including A. L.Kroeber, B. Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, D. N.Majumder, Irawati Karve S. C. Dube and others. T. C. Dasis the missing personality in this list too4. The same storyis repeated in all the successive pages of the ModelCurriculum in the compulsory and elective courses of thepost-graduate syllabi, in the papers on ‘Tribal Cultures ofIndia’, ‘Tribal Development’4 as well as in ‘Applied Social-Cultural Anthropology’4 and in the papers in Diplomacourses on ‘Anthropological Methodology’ and‘Ethnographic Field Investigation and ResearchTechniques’4. We do not find the name of Tarak ChandraDas, who was one of the most brilliant, socially responsibleand ground-breaking Indian anthropologist in the Pre-Independence period. It is really distressing that in thewhole syllabi of the Model Curriculum and RecommendedList of Readings prepared by the apex policy making bodyof higher education in India Das could not find a place.

Contributions of T.C.Das

The only comprehensive available account of the listof publications of T. C. Das including a short life-sketchwas prepared not by an anthropologist or a sociologist butby the Reference Librarian in the Central Library of theAnthropological Survey of India, Mr.Shyamal Kumar Ray,in his invaluable book Bibliographies of Eminent IndianAnthropologists (with Life-Sketches) published by theAnthropological Survey of India in July, 1974. The volumecontains the list of publications and short life-sketches of

12 eminent Indian anthropologists including Tarak ChandraDas5. It begins with L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer (1861-1937)and S. S. Sarkar (1908-1969) as the last anthropologistcovering a span of more than one hundred years if wetake the year of birth of Iyer and the year of death ofSarkar at the two ends of the continuum. T. C. Das fallssomewhere in the middle of the continuum. What strikeseven a casual observer is that in the life-sketches of these12 eminent anthropologists except T. C. Das the authorcould cite the dates of demise of all the otheranthropologists! The year of birth of T. C. Das was alsomentioned differently in two books. While Shyamal KumarRay recorded Das’ year of birth in 1898 while Surajit Sinhain his edited book Field Studies on the People of Indiapublished in 1978 mentioned it as 18976. Sinha howevergave the date of demise of his teacher as 26 July 19646.

In any case, from the short life-sketch of T.C. Daswe came to know that he earned his M.A. degree from theCalcutta University in ‘Ancient Indian History and Culture’and joined the newly founded Department of Anthropologyat the Calcutta University in 1921 as a research scholarand then he became lecturer in 1923 and finally retiredfrom the rank of Reader in the Department in 1963. Dasconducted extensive fieldworks in Chotanagpur in the thenBihar and in Assam. He also conducted fieldwork to assessthe impact of industrialization in Birlapur in West Bengal,wrote thought provoking articles containing anthropologicaland sociological analyses on Bengal dowry restriction billof 1940 and Hindu code bill in the years 1940 and 1944along with articles on the practical suggestions for theimprovement of museums in India and an empirical articleon the fish-gorge in Bengal in the prestigious journals likeModern Review, Calcutta Review and Ethnos. He was verymuch interested in the application of Anthropology and hada great reputation as a teacher and trainer in field methods.

The publications of T. C. Das spanned over a periodof 41 years from 1922-1963. He began to write academicarticles in Anthropology when he was 24 and wrote hislast article in 1963, a year before his death. Bibliographicalrecords of T. C. Das show that he had 42 publications thatis one in every year of his academic career. He published31 full-length articles, 2 books, 6 abstracts, two jointlyauthored books and one joint article.5 The national andinternational journals in which he published wereprestigious and they included Man, Anthropos, Ethnos,Calcutta Review, Modern Review, Sociological Bulletin,Journal of Social Research, Journal of the Department ofLetters and Anthropological Papers of the University ofCalcutta. Apart from kinship and social organization, hisareas of research interest display remarkable diversity which

42 SCIENCE AND CULTURE, JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 2012

ranged between sun-worship7, the disposal of dead amongthe tribals8, improvement of museums9, scheme for tribalwelfare10, impact of industrialization on peasantry11 to ananthropological analysis of Bengal dowry restriction bill12.

From 1922 to 1940, that is about 18 years of hisactive academic life Das did not venture to write anysignificant article on the application of social anthropologyfor the welfare and improvement of the communities andcultures he had studied. His main research interest duringthis period was to record and study the different aspectsof culture and social organization of the tribal and non-tribal communities of the eastern and north-eastern partsof India. In this period he conducted fieldwork andpublished on the Ho, Bhumij, Kharia, Chiru, Bathuri andPurum Kuki. His paper in prestigious international journalsof Anthropology like Anthropos, Man, and Ethnos had beenpublished during this period.

The Contemporary and Theoretical Relevanceof the Works of T.C. Das

The Indian Science Congress Lecture : The year1941 can be regarded as a major turning point in theacademic career of T. C. Das. In 1941, he delivered theSectional President’s address in the Anthropology Sectionof the Indian Science Congress. The lecture was a 29page full-length paper entitled ‘Cultural Anthropology inthe Service of the Individual and the Nation’. This papercan be regarded as one of the pioneering articles on appliedanthropology in India, although neither L. P. Vidyarthi norSurajit Sinha mentioned about this significant contributionin their articles on Indian anthropology.13, 3 In the address,Das elaborately charted out the future path of Indiananthropology with a rich description of the social dynamicsof the tribal and peasant societies in India in the contextof the role of anthropologists in nation building14. TheScience Congress paper is not only a lecture, but it is alsovery much relevant in the present Indian context.

In this lecture Das’s major objective was to convincehis readers about the immense potential of social-culturalanthropology as applied science for the overall developmentof the Indian population. In the five sub-sections of thelecture, Das dealt with the application of anthropology inalmost all the important sectors of a modern nation, viz.trade, industry, agriculture, legislation, education, socialservice and administration. With the help of concreteempirical findings either from his own field experiencesor from the ethnographic accounts of world renowned socialanthropologists(e.g. Lucy Mair, Felix Keesing, IssacSchepera, H. I. Hogbin, B. Malinowski) Das justified theinclusion of anthropologists in policy making bodies and

application of anthropological knowledge in every sphereof nation building.14In order to substantiate his arguments,Das had used rather unconventional sources of data, likeMahatma Gandhi’s 1937 article published in Harijan aboutthe adverse effects of the methods adopted by the Christianmissionaries to convert the economically poorer classes ofthe Hindu population in different parts of India14. N. K.Bose’s paper entitled ‘Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption’was presented as a lecture in the same Science Congressof 1941 in which T. C. Das delivered the sectionalpresidential address in Anthropology. Bose’s lecture waslater published in the journal Science and Culture and incourse of time, became famous in Indian Anthropologywhile Das’s lecture dealing with the role of anthropologyin solving the burning and practical problems of nationbuilding went into oblivion among the anthropologists inIndia.

One of the most vital sections in the lecture of Daswas on the role of anthropologists in building up a propertype of educational system suitable for the real needs of aparticular community in the Indian context. The greatanthropologist had the courage to write strong wordsregarding the colossal wastage of public money by the thencolonial government for the establishment of schools amongthe tribal people. Let us hear in his words.

Education is perhaps rightly claimed as the panaceaof all evils that befall mankind. But people differ in itsdefinition, and naturally it has different types. There isone kind of education which uplifts the individual morallyand intellectually and makes him fit for the struggle forexistence. There is another kind of education which isintended for the exploitation of the so-called educated.There is a third type of education which the enthusiasts intheir zeal for ameliorating the condition of the poor andthe ill-fated impose upon them without considering theirnecessity or capacity. We have neither time nor inclinationto discuss this point here but suffice it to say that muchlabour and more public money have been squandered andare still being squandered in imparting education whichdoes neither suit the people nor help them to put a morselof food into their mouth14.

Had he stopped here the above words would at bestbeen regarded as a fine piece of journalistic remark onour educational system. But Das then narrated from hisown rich field experiences in Manipur valley of Northeastern India about the adverse social impact of theestablishment of a network of primary schools and a fewhigh English schools. To quote Das again.

The two schools I saw used to teach their studentshow to read and write Methei besides a little arithmetic,

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which they managed to forget within a few months aftertheir departure from the school. …… it is difficult tounderstand how high school education will help Manipuriagriculture or textile industry. The employments at thedisposal of the State are very limited and the students whopass out of these schools every year will increase thenumber of unemployed as they no longer think of goingback to their fields. During the first few years they will beidolized by the community but this will soon pass awaywhen they will be looked upon as parasites and it is notimpossible that they will be a source of trouble to theState.14 Consider this insightful observation of Das inconnection with the active participation of the Englisheducated youth in the ethnic and secessionist movementsthat developed in this region of India after theIndependence. Das strongly advocated that in this type ofsituations the advice of the experienced and trainedanthropologists is required in the Herculean task ofeducating the tribal and other underprivileged communitiesin a diverse country like India.

I would end my discussion on the lecture with twoobservations.

First, Das probably was the first Indian anthropologistto advocate the indispensable role of social-culturalanthropology in nation building by combining micro-levelfield observations within a macro framework which is stilllacking among the majority of Indian anthropologists.

Second, it is true that Das in his endeavour to applyanthropological knowledge to solve practical problemslargely adopted a functional view of culture the followersof which believed that society behaves more or less like abiological organism. Does it mean that Das was a devotedfollower of the then British functionalism propounded byMalinowski? Did Das reject the role of historical and/orarchival methods of interpretation in dealing with his fielddata? We will explore these questions later in this article.

The Studies on Purum Kuki and Bengal Famine :Two valuable books written by T.C. Das not only bearstestimony of his meticulous observation and collection ofdata through fieldwork but these works has immensetheoretical and methodological potential to generate futureresearch in anthropological advocacy and policymaking .One is, The Purums: An Old Kuki Tribe of Manipur15 andthe other Bengal Famine16.

Purum Kuki : The Purum monograph was one ofthe most comprehensive works produced by anyanthropologist on the life of a small tribe and it became amajor source of data for a number of world renownedsocial anthropologists of Great Britain and USA in later

years. Unfortunately, both the foreign and the Indiananthropologists concentrated more on the theoretical aspectsof Das’s Purum study leaving aside its applied dimensionswhich was emphasized by him in the concluding chapterof the book15.

I would begin my discussion with L.P. Vidyarthi’sreading of the Purum monograph, since he is the loneanthropologist who emphasized the applied dimension ofDas’s work on the tribe. Vidyarthi in the first volume ofhis book Rise of Anthropology in India described in detailabout the findings of Das in the different chapters of themonograph with much admiration for its meticulousnessand penetrating analyses. In the final part of his description,Vidyarthi discussed about the suggestions advanced by Dasfor the betterment of the Purums.3 For Vidyarthi, with thepublication of the Purum book T.C. Das ‘set an exampleof a systematic presentation of ethnographic data.’3 Heconcluded the discussion on Das’s monograph with thefollowing comment.

His monograph, though not well known to Indianscholars, remains a piece of meticulous fieldwork andpenetrative analysis. It will continue to serve as a modelfor ethnographic research in anthropology. 3

We would now look more closely into the concludingchapter of T.C. Das’s book on the Purum Kuki. In the firstpart of his concluding chapter Das laid emphasis on thedynamic nature of Purum society which had undergonechanges through historical times and also on the differentaspects of Purum culture under various kinds of externalinfluences.

Secondly, Das was keenly interested to understand thenature of the ‘productive system’(he did not use theMarxian term means of production but it was clear that bythe term ‘productive system’ he did not only refer totechnology and material culture) in a dynamic rather thanin a functional framework.

Thirdly, without borrowing terms from the WesternMarxist scholars mechanically, Das made a very sincereempirical attempt to record the processes by which the newproductive system, characterized by plough and plains-landcultivation had begun to influence the different sectors ofthe Purum society, viz., inheritance, marriage and religion.Apart from looking into the internal sociocultural changesbrought about by the adoption of the plough cultivationamong the Purums, Das was also aware of the widerpoliticoeconomic forces which were at work in the regionwhere this small tribe inhabited. He stated at the beginningof the section I of his concluding chapter.

44 SCIENCE AND CULTURE, JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 2012

Though foreign merchandise has come to Purumhome, it is still immune from the money-lenders of theplains. This is partly due to difficulties of transport andpartly to the judicious laws of land tenure of the State aswell as the nature of land-economy of the people.Investment is risky where there is no permanently cultivatedland with a marketable value. Nobody would invest moneyagainst jhum fields and the Purums have nothing else fromwhich the loan can be realized. The recent introduction ofpermanently cultivated fields will sooner or later changethe situation and if the State also relinquishes thestringency of the land-laws the Purums will fall easy preyto the land-grabbers who are sure to flock to their home.15

It is clearly evident that Das, unlike his contemporaryBritish social anthropologists was mainly looking at thedynamics of the changing nature of the economy of thePurums, rather than the stable and structural-functionalaspects of the kinship system of the tribe.

Bengal Famine : The book on the famine of Bengalwhich took place in 1943 was a unique and rare first-handstudy done by any anthropologist or social scientist on thevictims of one of the greatest tragedies of our country underthe colonial rule. An earlier version of the book wasdiscussed in the then British Parliament and some of therecommendations advanced by Das were adopted by theFamine Inquiry Commission in 1944 formed by the colonialgovernment for the prevention of future famines in India.16

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his book The Discovery of Indiaalso mentioned about the anthropological survey conductedby Das on the famine affected population of Bengal andexpressed his confidence on the results of the survey incontrast to the one carried out by the government.17

Ironically enough, the Nobel Laureate economist AmartyaSen though gave reference to Das’s original work severaltimes in his famous book Poverty and Famines 18, didnot mention about the explanatory and policy dimensionsof this brilliant work.19 It would be relevant in thisconnection to mention about a recent work done by anAmerican historian, Mark Tauger of the West VirginiaUniversity. Tauger has been studying Bengal Famine forquite a long time and in one of his recent papers, whichhas won the prestigious Wayne D. Rasmussen award bythe The Agricultural History Society of USA in 2010, hedescribed how Amartya Sen ignored the substantial amountof crop harvest data analysed by T.C. Das in his book onBengal Famine.20 In his paper ‘The Indian Famine Crisesof World War II’Tauger showed that Sen has used onlyone set of harvest data (the Famine Inquiry Commission’sReport) to establish his theory of man-made famine. Dason the other hand, used four different estimates of the

average rice area and yield during the 1930s to arrive at amore objective assessment of the situation. But even afterusing different sources Das observed that the yield datafor rice in Bengal widely varied and were rough andapproximate estimates based on conjectures. Tauger notedthis fact perceptively in his paper.

I will focus on Das’ book because Sen and otheradvocates of a “man-made” famine interpretation cite it.Das’ evidence and arguments show that the “man-made”famine interpretation has a potentially major inconsistencyin that it criticizes the British for bad decisions in dealingwith the famine but accepts problematic and potentiallypoliticized decisions by British officials about the size ofthe harvest. Das’ discussion also undermines the evidencefor that interpretation of the famine. The argument thatthe Bengal famine was “man-made” rests on Sen’scalculations using essentially one set of data in the FICreport. Das shows that the data in the FIC report are justone of several different groups of estimates, none of whichis based on any valid statistical studies, harvestmeasurements, samples, or similar sources.20

The subtitle of the book Bengal Famine is phrasedin the following words: ‘As revealed in a Survey of theDestitutes in Calcutta’. It is true that the book is the resultof a survey undertaken by a team of anthropologists during1943-44 in the Calcutta city and also in the villages of theten districts of undivided Bengal. The idea of conductinga survey with a team of trained anthropologists was firstconceived by T.C. Das in July-August of 1943 whenhundreds of hungry destitute entered into the city ofCalcutta in search of food. Das proposed the plan of thesurvey to his colleagues and prepared a detailedquestionnaire and a team was formed with eleven trainedanthropologists comprising the teachers and researchstudents of the Department of Anthropology of the CalcuttaUniversity. The data thus collected were analysed and apreliminary report was written and a major part of thereport was submitted to the Famine Inquiry Commission(constituted by the colonial government) in 1944 in theform of a memorandum. The report was later written inthe form of a book by T.C.Das in July 1948 and waspublished in 1949 by the Calcutta University. BengalFamine, therefore, is a unique example of team work underthe leadership of T.C.Das by a dedicated group of universitybased anthropologists who were driven more by social andmoral commitment than pure academic quest. This ofcourse does not mean that the survey was conducted in aloose manner, that methodological rigors were sacrificedin order to conduct a rapid and quick appraisal of thesituation. The team had no national or international funding

VOL. 78, NOS. 1–2 45

agency behind them; no political agenda was lying beforethem. The Calcutta University sanctioned a sum of Rs.500/- only to extend the survey in the rural areas of the tendistricts of erstwhile undivided Bengal. In fact, the twochapters on methodology, which are the best portions ofthe book, reveal its strength. The chapter XI of the bookentitled ‘Causes of the Famine of 1943’ is another treasure-house of the book which places Bengal Famine far abovethe category of a run-of-the-mill ‘sample survey’.PanditJawaharlal Nehru in his book The Discovery of India(1946) mentioned about the survey on Bengal Faminebefore the publication of the book by T.C.Das andexpressed his confidence on the results of the survey incontrast to the one carried out by the government. We quoteNehru.

The Department of Anthropology of the CalcuttaUniversity carried out an extensive scientific survey of thesample groups in the famine areas. They arrived at thefigure of about 3,400,000 total deaths by famine inBengal… Official figures of the Bengal Government basedlargely on unreliable reports from village patwaris orheadmen gave a much lower figure.17

The field based study of the Bengal famine of 1943conducted by T.C. Das, is not a typical anthropologicalstudy of a tribe or a village inhabited by several castes. Itis unique in many respects. Let us enumerate the facts.

First, this is the only study done by a team of trainedanthropologists under the leadership of T.C. Das on Bengalfamine.

Second, the book which was written by Das has notreceived its due attention by the successive generation ofanthropologists and sociologists in India.

Third, in this study Das and his co-fieldworkersemployed traditional anthropological methods (e.g.genealogy, case history, participant observation) for thecollection of data not from a specific tribe or caste in arural setting, but from a scattered and heterogeneous groupof human beings displaced from the different districts ofundivided Bengal affected by the acute food shortage.

Fourth, the fieldwork and the survey on the famineaffected population were carried out mainly in the city ofCalcutta.

Fifth, the report and the recommendations based onthe anthropological study of the famine in Bengal weretaken into consideration by the policy makers andadministrators at the highest level of governance.

Sixth, the explanation provided by Das on the causesof Bengal famine surpassed the prevalent anthropologicalinterpretations of social events— evolutionary, diffusionistand structure-functional.

The final and not the least important fact about thebook is the style of its presentation. Unlike the usual stateof affairs in which the ethnographer described the materialculture and social organization of tribal and caste villages,Das was tackling a much more complex situation in writingabout Bengal famine. So, he had to adopt an innovativestyle of presentation

Taken together, the above facts have made BengalFamine an unorthodox kind of anthropological study evenby modern standards.

Concluding Remarks

The present generation of anthropologists and socialscientists has a lot to learn from the works of this greatanthropologist regarding methodological rigour and theapplied aspects of their discipline. It is high time thatDepartment of Anthropology at the Calcutta Universityshould take initiatives to collect and republish the writingsof T.C. Das which have neither been reprinted by theCalcutta University nor are his books available at the salescounter of one of the oldest universities of India.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my friends, colleagues and studentsat my own university and also in the universities of Calcuttaand Delhi for procuring the books and articles used forwriting this historical commentary. I also express mygratitude to my friends at the Anthropological Survey ofIndia and the National Library, Kolkata for collecting someof the rare books and articles of T. C. Das. I am especiallygrateful to Mark B.Tauger who helped me generouslysending me his valuable papers and advices without whichI could not have known much of the untold story on thestudy of Bengal Famine by various scholars, including T.C. Das. I owe my debts to Prof. R. K. Das and Dr. K.Bose for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts ofthe manuscript. Last but not the least, I express my gratitudeto Dr. S. B. Chakrabarty for procuring a rare earlyphotograph of T. C. Das from the archive of the journalScience and Culture. A short biography of T. C. Das andhis photograph was published in the Science CongressSupplement of Science and Culture.21 Finally, I shouldthank the anonymous reviewers of Science and Culture fortheir insightful and critical comments on the first andsecond drafts of the paper. ❐

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and Current Projects) Indian Anthropological Association. NewDelhi. (1970).

2. A. Basu, M.P Basu, A.K Adhikary, Directory of Anthropologistsin India. Anthropological Survey of India, Govt. of India,Calcutta. (1981).

3. L.P. Vidyarthi, Rise of Anthropology in India: A Social ScienceOrientation, (Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi, 1978)Vols. I & II.

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6. S.Sinha, ‘Introducing the seminar’ pp.ix-xiv. (Field Studies onthe people of India. Ed. Surajit Sinha, Indian AnthropologicalSociety, Calcutta, 1978).

7. T.C. Das, ‘Sun-Worship amongst the aboriginal tribes of easternIndia’. J. of the Dept. of Letters, University of Calcutta, 11, 87-94 (1924).

8. T.C. Das, ‘Disposal by exposure among the Bathuris ofMayurbhanj State’.Man, 39: 3-7. (1940).

9. T.C. Das, ‘Practical steps towards the improvement of museumsin India’, The Cal. Rev. Nov. 97-100 (1943).

10. T.C. Das, ‘A scheme for tribal welfare’. J.of Soc.Res. 3:2, 93-112 (1960).

11. T.C. Das, ‘Method and approach in a survey on the impact offactory-employment on the life of the workers’. Soc. Bull. 9:1,46-59 (1960).

12. T.C. Das, ‘The Bengal dowry restriction bill, 1940: AnAnthropological analysis of its Implications’, Modern Review,70:6, 588-594(1941).

13. S. Sinha, ‘Is there an Indian tradition in social/culturalanthropology: retrospect and prospect’?, J.Indian anthrop. Soc.6:1-14, (1971).

14. T.C. Das, ‘Cultural Anthropology in the Service of the Individualand the Nation’.pp. 1- 29. Presidential Address delivered in theSection of Anthropology in the Twenty- eighth Indian ScienceCongress. Benares. (1941).

15. T.C Das, The Purums: An Old Kuki Tribe of Manipur (CalcuttaUniversity, Calcutta) (1945).

16. T.C. Das, Bengal Famine (1943): as revealed in a survey of thedestitutes of Calcutta. (Calcutta University, Calcutta) (1949).

17. J. Nehru, First published in 1946( The Discovery of India, OxfordUniversity Press, New Delhi) (1981).

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19. A. Guha, ‘Bengal Famine’ and a Forgotten Author’, Frontier,43:41-44 (2010).

20. M.Tauger, ‘The Indian Famine Crises of World War II’. BritishScholar, I: 166-96 (2009).

21. Short Life-Sketches of the General President and SectionalPresidents: T.C. Das, President, Anthropology Section. 1941,Science and Culture, Science Congress Supplement, 6:7 (1941)